Where the Trees are a Desertexplores
the links between pollution trading and monoculture eucalyptus
plantations in Brazil. The publication is a collaboration between
Carbon Trade Watch and our partners in Brazil, FASE-ES. Where the Trees are a Desert explores the issues from the perspective of people living and struggling with plantations on the ground. Nov 2003

The Sky is Not the Limit gives an overview of the issues around pollution trading and introduces the main issues such as; environmental justice, NGO co-optation and privatisation of the atmosphere. Also explored is the history of the UN process and who the key players are in the emerging emissions markets. Jan 2003

Green is the color of Money: The EU ETS faliure as a model for the green economy

Carbon Trade Watch
| Thursday, 21 June 2012

New research reveals that the EU ETS has failed to reduce emissions while subsidizing polluters. The third phase of the EU ETS, due to start next year, will see the same pattern of subsidizing polluters (including airlines) and continue to use offsets as a way of evading emissions reductions, within the same financial markets that brought us the economic crisis.

The author of the report, Ricardo Coelho stated: “Carbon trading cannot deliver the necessary phase out of fossil fuels nor can it question the destructive over-production and consumption model that lies at the heart of industrialized countries’ economies. By diverting resources to where it is cheapest to reduce emissions, carbon trading prioritizes end-of-pipe solutions, in detriment of more ambitious and just policies, and actually makes the environmental and climate crisis worse.”

The controversial Rio text is expected to be agreed upon today with little opposition from Ministers at the Riocentro. However, yesterday on the streets groups marched with slogans, ‘No REDD’ and ‘We Reject the Green Economy’. While the text ‘reaffirms’ its commitment to sustainable development and to implementing a ‘green economy’, it has been widely criticized for creating a roadmap towards commodifying ‘nature’ that will see a new push for privatizing water, forests, lands and ecosystems.

Joanna Cabello, from Carbon Trade Watch stated: “The EU continues to use carbon markets to transfer its environmental commitments to developing countries in the Global South and is pushing the EU ETS as a roadmap for environmental services markets here in Rio. Rio+20 is a smokescreen for big polluters.”